


And we'll light up the darkness

by Veto_power_over_clocks



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: F/F, Kasamatsu being awkward and clueless is my aesthetic, LOTS of white text, Rule 63, The 'Hide Creator's Style' button is your new best friend because I'm a pretentious jerk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 12:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3570110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veto_power_over_clocks/pseuds/Veto_power_over_clocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a Tuesday, Kasamatsu breaks her own heart in a last desperate attempt to keep it safe.</p><p>(In which Kasamatsu thinks she knows the plot and doesn't notice that she only knows her half of the story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	And we'll light up the darkness

**Author's Note:**

> This started as "okay, what if rule63!Kasamatsu still couldn't talk to girls?" and became this (the only reason this is rule 63 is because I wanted female Kasamatsu who got horribly nervous around female Kise).
> 
> Unbetaed, so if you point out any mistakes you see you're awesome.
> 
> If the white text becomes too complicated to read, click the "Hide creator's style" button at the top and it'll be visible.

((Last warning from the author: lots of white text ahead. Click the 'Hide Creator's Style' button above if you don't want to deal with it.))

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------

On a Tuesday afternoon, Kasamatsu breaks her own heart to keep it safe.

Now let’s go back to the start.

\---------

Kasamatsu’s female friends can be counted on one hand and they all belong to the basketball club. Kasamatsu’s male friends are pretty much all the boys in her class and some from other classes.

There have been rumors.

There have been ugly looks.

There was drama once, but Kasamatsu had ignored it.

Nowadays, girls know Kasamatsu isn’t after any of the boys and just ask her to help them deliver love letters.

\---------

For some reason, nobody notices that Kasamatsu barely speaks to girls, that she answers in short sentences and stutters in front of them.

Talking to boys is easy. Girls? Girls are wonderful and Kasamatsu loves them, even though they make her hands sweat, her tongue twist, and her mind freeze.

\---------

Kise catches her off guard one day, drags her to a coffee shop and asks, “Senpai, are you gay?”

Kasamatsu doesn’t choke on her drink, which is a blessing, but she’s still unable to reply, because she hasn’t known Kise long enough to know how to behave around her when basketball isn't involved.

All she does is blush and Kise nods, serious, and leans back.

Then, Kise grins.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

Kasamatsu opens her mouth in surprise, and closes it quickly, shaking her head, because there aren’t any words in her yet, and even if there were this isn’t a conversation she’d like to have with Kise.

“Eh?” Kise tilts her head, blinks in confusion and leans slightly forward, still holding her cup, bright pink nails against white ceramic. “Why not?”

“I can’t talk to girls,” Kasamatsu mumbles.

Kise stares, her eyes widen and she laughs. It sounds like a ray of light in a cloudy day, but that’s not enough to stop Kasamatsu from stepping on her foot.

“I’m sorry, I thought you didn’t talk to me because you hated me,” Kise says, wiping tears from her eyes and raising her cup to hide her smile. “You’re shy, senpai! Who’d have thou-OW!”

The kick Kasamatsu delivered was hard enough that she expects it to bruise.

Good. Maybe then Kise won’t mention her love life again.

\---------

Sometimes, Kise thinks she’s not a nice person. 

Sometimes, she doesn’t want to be a nice person, and she walks past boys who’ve annoyed her without even glancing at them, or wears a skirt that’s just a bit shorter than usual, just to get what she wants.

Sometimes, though, she forgets to be a nice person, like when she catches Kasamatsu looking for too long at a second year girl - one that’s smart, serious, responsible, and pretty enough to receive a couple of love letters – and suddenly her captain’s awkwardness around her female classmates, around Kise herself, makes perfect sense, so she kind of stalks her captain on a Sunday, drags her into a coffee shop and asks, nonchalant, “Senpai, are you gay?” despite already knowing the answer; and then she feels bad for forgetting to be nice, for forcing a confession that should have been said to a friend, and tries to help in the only way that comes to her mind.

\---------

“You know, senpai, maybe you should practice talking to girls,” Kise says one day after school, as they walk home. She’d waited for Kasamatsu, who’d done her best to be as slow as possible, hoping Kise would get bored and leave.

“It’s not that easy,” Kasamatsu says, looking straight ahead.

“It is! You just need to get used to it!” Kise stops walking abruptly, claps once and gasps. “I know, you could practice with me!”

Kasamatsu stops walking and turns around, confused.

“I could be your practice girlfriend, senpai,” Kise says, smiling.

Muscle memory makes Kasamatsu reach to pull her hair, which is now too short to be kept in the ponytail she used to tie it in before the Interhigh. She settles for grabbing her nose and pinching, still not looking at her.

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m trying to help you! If you can’t even talk to me, how will you talk to other girls? You should date me!”

“Wouldn’t that be a problem for you? What if someone sees you?”

“But we won’t kiss or hold hands! We’ll just date. We'll look like friends to everyone!”

Kasamatsu might be a bit desperate, because she considers it for a moment. And for another moment. And another one.

And then she lets go of Kise’s nose and agrees.

\---------

Kise waits for her every day after practice and they walk home together. On the first day, Kasamatsu tries to ignore the meaningless chatter, all the useless information about Kise that she has no interest in, all the gossip and the random thoughts.

On the second day, she decides to listen. She can’t learn to hold a conversation if she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to reply to.

\---------

“And what happened?” Kasamatsu asks on the fourth day.

Kise, tired of speaking, had shut up in the middle of a ridiculous story that had taken her far too long to tell, and which barely had any truth in it. She'd assumed that Kasamatsu wouldn’t care.

“I don’t know, senpai. I thought you weren’t paying attention, so I made up most of it.”

She shrugs and turns to look at Kasamatsu. Her brow’s furrowed and she’s staring intently at the ground. Then, she looks up at Kise and says, in a tone that might have tried to be light and joking, but comes out as confused and nervous, “That… explains the aliens.”

Kise doesn’t know if she’s smiling at the progress or at finding out she hadn’t been ignored.

\---------

People love Kise. It’s kind of understandable, really, after all Kise is pretty - blonde hair, long legs, smooth skin and perfect nails - and charming, with her easy smile and that spark in her eyes when people pay attention to her, so it’s easy to be smitten and ignore the fact that she’s so. Fucking. Annoying.

For Kasamatsu, it used to be the way Kise behaves, too loud, too flirty, so tacky. Nowadays, she barely notices the tiny skirts, the coquettish giggles and the exaggerated greetings, but she still feels the urge to hit Kise sometimes, mainly because Kise always keeps her wondering how much is real. Is she really that happy to see them? Does she really care that much? Then Kise turns her pretty head and grins at her, “Hello, senpai,” as she warms up, bright and delighted and Kasamatsu reminds herself that it’s real, that there’s a layer of truth in all of it, hidden under sparkles and smiles for the cameras.

Maybe that’s the reason why Kasamatsu’s favorite Kise is the one that shows up right after a match ends: the buzzer goes off, the final score is on the screen, and Kise lets everything show on her face. In those moments, Kasamatsu doesn’t need to guess what’s going through her ace’s mind, because it’s the same thing that’s going through hers, through the entire team’s heads, and that gives her a moment to breathe.

When Kise smiles in a way that Kasamatsu suspects is completely honest – no attempts to get herself out of trouble, no exaggerated loveliness, no impossible cheerfulness – it makes it hard to breathe: Kasamatsu doesn’t know how to deal with a Kise that doesn’t make her want to hit her.

\---------

“Stop eating my lunch,” Kasamatsu says, slapping Kise’s hand as she tries to reach for her food.

Kise insists on having lunch together. Kasamatsu barely talks, but every day that passes it’s easier for her to stop worrying about how she looks when she eats, if she’s too fast, or too slow. Her lunch is nothing unusual, yet Kise spends the whole lunch hour stealing bits from it, probably just because she can.

“Why? We’re dating! We should share!”

Kasamatsu narrows her eyes and glares. “I don’t take your food.”

Kise’s solution is to divide her lunch in half, point at one of the portions and say, “All of that is yours,” before digging into Kasamatsu’s lunch again.

It says something about all the time they’ve spent together that she controls her first impulse to hit her and instead tries Kise’s food, keeps eating without wanting to complain, which is good, because she still isn’t very sure about how to argue with Kise. She’s still working on the whole ‘speaking more than ten words and not hitting her too often’ thing.

The next day, Kise brings a paper plate, puts half her lunch on it and hands it to Kasamatsu. It becomes routine, so Kasamatsu starts buying an extra drink at the school’s vending machine and handing it wordlessly to Kise when she takes out her food.

\---------

“Senpai, what’s your type?” Kise asks as she paints her nails.

She’s sitting cross-legged on her bed, her phone on speaker. Even when they’re not face to face, it takes Kasamatsu a while to reply, but at least she does reply, which is better than the never-ending silences that compose her half of most of their direct conversations.

This time it takes her longer than usual. Kise can imagine Kasamatsu’s face going many different shades of red as she debates whether to reply or not.

“Shorter than me, long hair, serious,” Kasamatsu finally says, voice even.

“Hm, so you don’t like me at all?” Kise asks, cheery, and laughs when she hears Kasamatsu curse, laughs even though she's annoyed and glaring at her nails.

\---------

Kasamatsu’s second favorite Kise is the one that shows up during matches: the intensity in her eyes, the purity of her actions.

The only reason it’s not her favorite is because that Kise wants the world and the world is victory, and she’ll stop at nothing to get it. She’s sure that Kise would lie to herself if she had to just for a chance to win, and it scares Kasamatsu a bit what would happen if Kise tried to apply that determination to something that wasn’t basketball.

\---------

“Why are you so intent on me getting a girlfriend?”

“Maybe you’d be in a better mood if someone pampered you, senpai. There’s only so much violence my body can take.”

Kasamatsu throws a pencil at Kise’s head, and feels she’s actually proven Kise’s point.

\---------

At some point, Kise stops trying to fill every silence. She speaks less as they walk home and as they eat, only comments things that catch her attention or which she thinks Kasamatsu could be interested in.

First, Kasamatsu thought Kise had run out of things to say, then she thought she’d gotten bored of trying to talk to someone who still has trouble putting a sentence together without stuttering after two weeks, but, well, Kise never leaves her behind when they walk, and there’s a small, pleased smile on her face when she’s quiet, and sometimes she hums, and Kasamatsu wonders if, while trying to make Kasamatsu feel comfortable around her, Kise had ended up feeling comfortable around Kasamatsu.

Whatever the reason, Kise has decided that she can be a nightlight instead of a neon sign next to Kasamatsu, so the least Kasamatsu can do in return is give her a few words every now and then.

The few words get replies, which receive some more words in return, and Kasamatsu suddenly realizes that she’s holding a conversation without nervousness.

It’s nice.

\---------

The silences are nice too. They’re soft and companionable.

\---------

They learn each other’s favorite foods and colors, they learn about each other’s hobbies.

Kise learns about Kasamatsu’s first crush, how she’d realized that she wasn’t supposed to spend her time thinking about a girl’s words and actions, how she’d spent months thinking herself defective, blaming herself for doing things wrong, worrying about how to hide it.

Kasamatsu laughs in an ugly way when she talks about it, humorless, bitter, a bit self-hating, and Kise spends five minutes wondering if she’d take it the wrong way if she tried to hug her. She opts for putting one arm around her shoulders and pulling her close, something Kasamatsu can take as either protection or as acceptance.

It’s both things, really, but Kise suspects Kasamatsu interpreted it as sympathy.

\---------

“No.”

“Come on, senpai, it’d look great on you! It’d bring out your eyes!”

“It’s too expensive. It’s just a sweater!”

“But you’ve got such pretty eyes… Any girl would fall for you if they could pay attention to them!”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Kasamatsu asks, leaving the sweater in the rack and walking out of the shop.

“That your eyes are pretty, but you’re always so nervous that you keep looking down and showing your eyebrows.” Kise makes a face. “And you spend too much time being pissed off.”

“…you’re the worst practice girlfriend ever.”

“Don’t be mean to me!”

Kise pouts. Kasamatsu sighs.

“…will you let me fix your eyebrows?” Kise says, giving her the annoying puppy look.

Kasamatsu agrees because she’s become a bit weak in front of that face, and if she doesn’t give in at something irrelevant she might end up giving in at something important.

\---------

Kasamatsu’s sure that 90% of the boys at their school would fight for a chance to be so close to Kise’s face. She’d gladly give them her spot, because there’s nothing hot in having Kise pull out your eyebrows with tweezers, and she also gets to see every little detail of Kise’s face, every single thing that makes it imperfect, softer, that makes her look like the teenager she is instead of some unattainable standard of beauty.

Which is why it scares her a bit that she’s so conscious of Kise’s touch, and that she doesn’t think she’s any less pretty at this distance.

When Kise’s done and makes her look at her reflection, Kasamatsu’s eyes ignore it in favor of studying Kise’s proud smile. Longing settles in her chest, and it hurts like a broken promise.

\---------

“Senpai, this isn’t fun,” Kise whines.

“I told you I have a test tomorrow, you didn’t have to come,” Kasamatsu replies, not looking up from her textbook. She’s sitting on her bed, back against the wall, feet dangling over the edge, and Kise’s having a hard time not staring, because her skirt has ridden up, exposing her thighs.

“Okay, I’m gonna be responsible too,” Kise says, taking out a textbook and laying on the bed, resting her head on Kasamatsu’s lap.

“What are you doing?” Kasamatsu says through gritted teeth, blushing. It’s cute on her.

“Making myself comfortable.”

“Like that?”

“We’re dating, senpai,” Kise says smugly. “You won’t let your girlfriend put her head on your lap?”

“We never agreed to this.”

“We aren’t kissing or holding hands! And you’re comfy!”

Kasamatsu pushes her off the bed, but doesn’t say anything when Kise climbs back to sit next to her.

She doesn’t get any reading done, watches Kasamatsu turn the pages in her textbook and frown in concentration, tries not to imagine herself pulling up Kasamatsu’s skirt a bit higher. She’s seen Kasamatsu’s legs plenty of times in the changing room, but there’s something in the idea of being the one sliding up her skirt to expose more skin that makes what little she can see right now far more attractive.

_Oh, crap_ , Kise thinks.

\---------

Kise’s late for practice and Kasamatsu’s going to kill her. It’ll be bloody and spectacular, but when she rounds a corner on her way to Kise’s classroom, already imagining how she’ll scare away whoever it is that’s keeping her, she finds Kise talking to some guy and Kasamatsu’s blood freezes: his hand is on Kise’s shoulder and there’s a smile on Kise’s face that passes as nice and pleasant, but which is just a bit too bright, just a bit too cheerful, and her eyes are cold. Kasamatsu wants him to step away from Kise as soon as possible and, if her face is any indication, so does Kise, who’s pushing the guy’s hand away and looking kind of murderous, her smile slipping.

Kasamatsu walks to them, grabs Kise’s wrist and starts pulling her towards the gym, saying something in the guy’s direction that she hopes was threatening and will keep him away from Kise forever, because Kise won’t forget him, even if she forgives him for whatever it was that he did.

“He insists I should date him,” Kise mutters when they’re halfway to the gym. “Plays nice and keeps coming back even when I reject him.”

Kasamatsu stops walking and turns around. She doesn’t really care what happened, just wants to get Kise away, because she’s trembling with rage and her face is still doing that scary thing that reminds everyone that Teikou was merciless. She wonders how many guys claim to love Kise, how many chase after her without stopping to think about her, about what she’s like, and Kasamatsu wants to turn around and break the guy’s nose, because Kise is more than masturbation material for horny teenagers that might be interested in knowing that Kise has a mole on her left thigh, but that probably wouldn’t care about the scar on her left ring finger; more than a fantasy for boys who might care about her favorite food, but wouldn’t ask why she hates unagi.

Or maybe Kasamatsu just wants to feel special after spending so much time being Kise’s girlfriend, and she needs an excuse to think herself better than the guys who actually could date Kise for real.

“Maybe you should tell him you’re already dating someone,” Kasamatsu says, finally stopping.

Kise blinks a couple of times, and her expression finally softens, something similar to the one she wears when they’re alone.

“Was that a joke, senpai?” she asks.

“Of course it was,” Kasamatsu says, not quickly enough, and finally lets go of Kise’s wrist.

 _Oh, fuck_ , she thinks, and hopes Kise hasn’t noticed anything.

\---------

It’s always Kise casually touching Kasamatsu: hands brushing, arms bumping, hugging, linking their arms together. Nothing had burned like Kasamatsu’s hand on her wrist, and she’s barely able to keep herself from reaching for Kasamatsu when she lets go. Kise wants to hold her, to kiss the top of her head and ask her if they can stop the dumb ‘practice-dating’ thing, because she’s seen Kasamatsu watching her for a moment too long, she’s noticed how Kasamatsu leans towards her slightly on the walk home, and Kise also wants to tell her that she needs to hold her hand, she wants them to spend their free time together in real dates, she wants to give her presents, shower her with attention and cover her with kisses.

She doesn’t move because Kasamatsu looks terrified for a second when she lets go of Kise’s wrist, and Kise suspects she might break her captain if she tells her everything she’s thinking.

\---------

Kise buys her the damn sweater.

Kasamatsu insists on paying her back, and Kise says you don’t pay back your girlfriend for the gifts she gives you, that’s just rude!

It feels more like a thank you than a real gift, and Kasamatsu doesn’t want a reward for doing what felt right.

\---------

They’re watching a video of a previous match and there’s a soft tug at Kasamatsu’s ponytail. She turns quickly to find Kise staring at her with wide eyes, like she’s as surprised by the action as Kasamatsu.

“Sorry, senpai. I needed something to play with to keep my hands occupied and your hair was there and I wasn’t thinking.”

She looks panicked. Kise curls her hands into fists, rests them on her thighs and directs her eyes to the front. Her knuckles are white, and Kasamatsu wonders if Kise’s nails will dig into her palms, if Kise will keep her hands clenched long enough to draw blood just to keep herself from doing something absentmindedly again.

Kasamatsu can’t blame her. Kise’s hair used to reach her waist and she’d kept it in a ponytail that swayed when she ran, and sometimes Kasamatsu would find herself watching it swing from side to side during matches, the only thing that Kasamatsu always liked in her. Kise could control her movements, could run, jump, dribble and dunk, everything according to plan, but her ponytail would just swing and go wherever physics told it to.

The day after the match against Touou, Kise had shown up with her hair short, cut into a boyish hairstyle, and laughed away the stares and the heartbreak in her fans’ eyes, had smiled at the sneers and the snide remarks from some girls.

“I wanted it shorter, but my stylist would have killed me,” Kise had said.

Kasamatsu still isn’t sure why she did it, hasn’t asked, and sometimes she catches Kise absentmindedly reaching to play with her hair when they’re discussing new strategies, when they’re watching videos of matches, and she guesses today she’d just reached for Kasamatsu’s hair out of instinct.

She looks up to the ceiling, asking for a signal that what she’s about to do won’t be her doom. There’s nothing, but she still goes ahead with the dumb idea that just came to her mind and unties her hair.

“No stupid hairstyles,” she whispers to Kise, who looks confused, so Kasamatsu takes one of Kise’s hands and brings it to her hair. “But I swear that if you don’t pay attention you’re getting extra laps.”

She doesn’t understand the look Kise gives her, worried and nervous, so she turns to look at the match again and ignores her.

After two minutes, she feels the tugging again, hands pulling her hair back softly, fingers brushing it, and Kasamatsu ignores the thumping in her chest whenever Kise reaches for loose strands that have fallen in front of her face and her fingers brush her neck.

\---------

Kise skips practice and goes to Seirin.

Kurokocchi and Kagamicchi greet her cautiously when she walks into the gym, and she smiles and hugs them and then walks away from them to find Seirin’s captain, who makes the funniest faces when Kise calmly tells her something along the lines of, “I’m crushing on my captain, she’s crushing on me too, and I want to tell her we should date without terrifying her. You’re a lot like her, so I need your advice!”

The summary of the conversation is that people apparently can’t get it into their heads that being attracted to men doesn’t mean you can’t be attracted to other genders, that apparently everyone’s convinced of her heterosexuality, that she should tell Kasamatsu that the things she wants to do with her range from sickeningly sweet to scandalous, and that she should never, ever again go to Hyuuga for advice because she doesn’t want anything to do with Kise’s love life, and she really, really didn’t need to know that Kise wanted to do unspeakable things to her captain.

She doesn’t really learn anything from the conversation, but it helps her clear her head.

\---------

Kise skipped practice and left Kasamatsu alone for the first time in almost five weeks.

She’s not entirely sure what to do with the sudden freedom that feels far too much like loneliness, or with how she keeps looking at her side to read Kise’s expression when she walks past something interesting, only to remember she’s on her own.

There’s a small shop by the station that sells plastic earrings. They’re cheap and simple, but they’re cute, and Kasamatsu buys a pair for Kise before she can think better of it.

She tells herself it’s a way to pay for the sweater, even if all she could picture while paying was how delighted Kise would look when she received them.

\---------

On a Tuesday, Kasamatsu gathers enough courage to give Kise the earrings. 

She needs courage because there’s no way Kise won’t realize what the gift means, and if their weird not-relationship is going to end, she must look strong, not terrified but hopeful.

Kasamatsu takes a long time changing after practice, long enough for everyone to go home, but when she leaves the changing room, Kise’s there, like she’s been every day for the last five weeks.

She doesn’t let Kise speak, she just walks over to her and hands Kise the little plastic bag with the earrings.

“For me?” Kise asks, smiling when she takes them out, genuinely pleased, just like Kasamatsu had imagined, and it makes everything hurt more than she’d expected it to.

“Do you see anyone else here?” Kasamatsu says matter-of-factly.

Kise gives her a strange look. She’s still smiling, but her gaze is intense, and Kasamatsu waits for the end, for a gentle rejection, for the suggestion that the whole practice-dating thing should stop because it’s been going on for too long.

They’re quiet as Kise takes out the earrings she’s wearing and puts on the new ones, and then she takes out a small mirror to check how they look.

“Wow, senpai, who’d have thought you were such a romantic?”

 _Just end it already_ , Kasamatsu thinks, but Kise keeps talking, thanking her, and just starts walking home without even implying that she understands anything.

Kasamatsu isn’t sure what to do with the situation, just follows her in silence, and it all feels too much like the first few days.

When it’s time to part ways, Kise tugs her sleeve and tells her, “Senpai, there’s something I’d like to try,” before putting her free hand on Kasamatsu’s cheek and leaning towards her.

Kasamatsu freezes as Kise’s face comes closer, any words and thoughts disappearing in front of the understanding of what’s about to happen and the need to decide.

She wants Kise, all of her, the smiles and the charm, the grudges, her passion and her dedication. She wants to be annoyed by Kise and smitten. She wants the small scar on Kise’s finger as much as she wants that mole on her thigh. She hopes to make her laugh every day, she dreams of making her moan some nights. She wants everything Kise is, even if all she can give in exchange is herself, her bony knees, her black hair, her yells and kicks and a thousand inexperienced caresses, her soul in a kiss and her heart in a compliment.

Kise’s lips are so close to Kasamatsu’s that she can almost feel them, and she wants this more than she’s ever wanted anything else, but she also wants a kiss that wasn’t given out of pity, or whatever it is that’s behind Kise’s actions, so she covers Kise’s face with her hand and pushes her away, breaking her own heart so she won’t have to hate Kise for breaking it.

She feels a bit like crying, and she’s going to blame PMS for it, even if the date doesn’t match, because if there’s one person she shouldn’t be wanting to cry over, that’s Kise.

\---------

Kasamatsu looks like she’s about to start crying, and that’s not a good look on her.

“Senpai, don’t cry,” Kise says, muffled by Kasamatsu's hand on her mouth. “I’m sorry, should I have asked you first?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Kasamatsu looks furious, but her voice breaks, and she starts walking away.

“I was trying to be romantic and kiss you goodbye, I thought you’d like that!”

“We said no kissing!”

“But you like me!”

“And that’s enough to kiss me?" Kasamatsu turns around, points accusingly at Kise. "Seriously? What’s in your head? Are you trying to make me feel better or something? Was that some kind of parting gift before you broke up with me? Were you curious about what it’d be like to kiss a girl and thought I wouldn’t say no?”

Kasamatsu’s voice had steadily risen, until she was almost yelling, and she looks hurt and angry. Kise’s a bit offended by how badly Kasamatsu misinterpreted everything and by how cruel her captain seems to think she is, but right now she’s far more worried about how to erase that expression from Kasamatsu’s face.

"You think I'm playing?"

"You aren't?"

“Couldn’t it be that I like you?” Kise says, walking towards Kasamatsu, who takes a step back when she’s too close.

“Didn’t you like boys?” Kasamatsu crosses her arms and glares.

“And? I can like girls too. I do, actually”

“And you waited until now to tell me?”

“I was going to romantically reveal it by kissing you! And, anyway, when everything started I didn’t think I’d end up liking you!”

“Oh, thank you very much!”

“Oh, please, did you think you’d end up liking me?”

Kasamatu’s lips thin and she looks to the ground.

“No.”

“See? I didn’t think it would be relevant.”

“Oh.”

They don’t move, and Kise would really like to get all the awkwardness out quickly and start with the kissing, so she takes a step forward and grins when Kasamatsu doesn’t move away.

Now, Kise’s seen enough dramas to know how this should work, so she tilts Kasamatsu’s chin up with a finger, takes one of Kasamatsu’s hands and leans down to kiss her.

Kasamatsu’s lips are soft, and she moves them slowly, unsure, and Kise would gladly spend the rest of the night standing under a streetlamp kissing her, but Kasamatsu pulls away and hides her face on Kise’s shoulder.

That’s fine too. Kise wraps her arms around Kasamatsu, buries her nose in her hair, and bursts out laughing in relief that everything’s clear.

Kasamatsu laughs too, and everything’s perfect.

\---------

“Let’s date for real,” Kise says before leaving, looking apologetic and hopeful and making Kasamatsu forgive her for the emotional rollercoaster of the last hour.

“Okay,” Kasamatsu says, and can’t help smiling back at Kise, who’s practically glowing in her happiness, making everything kind of perfect for a moment.

**Author's Note:**

> In the next Seirin/Kaijou match, Hyuuga nearly has a crisis, because as soon as Kise sees her, she points at Kasamatsu and winks.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are appreciated.
> 
> Title from Studio Killers' "True Colours".
> 
> And, um, sorry for the experiment with the white text?
> 
> [There's a playlist](http://8tracks.com/veto-power-over-clocks/that-s-how-i-feel-about-you), in case you're curious about what I was listening to while I wrote.


End file.
